Londres : le vieux Horse Guards depuis St James's Park

Canaletto usually painted to order, but this London view he appears to have made on speculation, perhaps hoping someone along Downing Street, whose back gardens show at the right, would buy it. He had reason to hurry. The rambling Old Horse Guards at the center, seen across St James's Park, was already condemned. Within a few years it was pulled down and a grander building by the architect William Kent rose in its place, the one that still stands today. So the canvas holds a corner of Whitehall that was about to disappear. Canaletto had come to England around 1746, when war on the Continent choked off the Grand Tourists who were his usual customers in Venice, and he stayed on for years painting the city instead.